TBR’s Business Insights

PwC Middle East’s webcast provides excellent monthly insights into the region’s economies, but it is not the only active Big Four firm. As TBR reported in our Fall 2024 Management Consulting Benchmark, KPMG “announced the opening of Risk Hub in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in collaboration with Microsoft and IBM, paving the way for more in-person, tech-enabled GRC [governance, risk and compliance] discussions with regional clients embarking on their digital transformation programs.” TBR also learned in February that KPMG intends to open a new Ignition Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2025, building on the firm’s global network of innovation and transformation centers.

Explore this competitive pricing example from TBR’s Tailored Services team, which helped this global Top 3 hardware OEM capitalize on their investment in pricing research.

For SaaS vendors, the long-term opportunity lies in the ability to upsell GenAI solutions integrated directly into their existing workflows. While all major SaaS providers have made such solutions generally available, revenue from GenAI tools has not been enough to offset the slowing top-line growth many vendors are experiencing. Issues like cost, reliability, data governance and use-case validation remain obstacles to broader adoption, preventing the technology from becoming the growth driver vendors had hoped. Nevertheless, enterprise SaaS vendors continue to hold an optimistic long-term outlook, with many believing the technology will become a strategic necessary.

The long-sought-after growth of strong non-oil economies, the eventual weaning of these pivotal Middle East countries from subservience to the price of oil is happening now and happening quickly. And should a trade war break out between the U.S. and the European Union (EU) or the U.S. and China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — and the rest of the Middle East economies — will suffer. A production surge by the world’s largest oil producer — the U.S. — would further dampen oil prices, constraining Middle East governments’ budgets. Not everything is perfect, but certainly the big picture looks promising: Non-oil economies in oil-led countries have shown persistent, seemingly lasting growth.

Fujitsu’s investments in Fujitsu Kozuchi have equipped the company well to appeal to clients’ needs around the technology, providing opportunities to supply analytics with associated text, vision and trust in support of business operations. While AI technology evolves rapidly to include new capabilities, Fujitsu’s approach to developing the platform and leveraging partners and internal capabilities gives it an advantage in offering a wider set of services.